HMDA sees good scope for development in land pooling

Plans meeting with CREDAI and APREDA representatives to promote the concept

The HMDA is planning to organise meetings with real estate developers in the twin cities to promote the concept of ‘Land Pooling’ that promises to ensure development in a planned manner. HMDA Commissioner Neerabh Kumar Prasad, who is keen on popularising the concept, will be meeting the representatives of real estate bodies such as Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI)-Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh Real Estate Developers Association (APREDA).

Under the scheme, proposed in the Draft Master Plan for Hyderabad Metropolitan Region, land owners would have an opportunity to participate in the technique of land assembly or land readjustment projects. The concept is already popular in some other States such as Gujarat.

Public facilities

Officials say Land Pooling facilitates owners in contiguous sites to come together and pool their land. From this chunk of pooled land, the HMDA would extract areas needed for public facilities such as roads, parking, green spaces and others and from the remaining area, the owners get re-allocated.

The owners, though losing a slice of their undeveloped land, in the process get back the reduced bit in the same developed site. Smaller sites would not be able to provide necessary public infrastructure and on their own tend to develop in a haphazard manner. “Given this, they can pool their land, give us spaces for development and the rest is distributed back among them,” an official said.

The Land Pooling scheme not only promises to uniformly develop the accumulated land, but at the same time ensures higher value for the site. “The owners might lose part of their land but in return they get a well developed and bigger site that would not be possible within their own small one,” he said.

Slideshow

Traffic got disrupted and main thoroughfares turned into canals due to a sudden unseasonal downpour in Hyderabad on Monday afternoon. The Hindu lensman Mohammed Yousuf captures the travails of commuters.